BOXING & WRESTLING STUDENT RESOURCES

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HISTORY

BOXING was originally nothing more than fist-fighting, a natural fighting style for human beings. As a sport, fist-fighting has been around for thousands of years where it first arose in parts of ancient world, including Egypt, before spreading to parts of Southern Europe. The Ancient Greeks believed that fighting was a game played by the Gods on Olympus. It can be seen in artwork and sculptures from different parts of the ancient world. The Romans had a keen interest in fist-fighting, and it became a popular spectator sport for them. To protect their hands, fighters wrapped leather straps around their fists. Eventually harder leather was used and these straps soon became more of a weapon. The Romans even introduced metal studs to make even more deadly weapons. Roman boxing was often a fight to the death to please spectators for events typically held at Roman Amphitheaters. In later times, slaves and trained combat performers were valuable commodities, and their lives were not given up so easily. Often the participants fought in a circle marked on the floor, giving rise to the term “Ring.” During the Roman gladiator period (about 400 BC to 500 AD), boxing competition was abolished due to excessive brutality. Records of this early boxing activity disappeared with the fall of the Roman Empire. However, there are detailed records of various fist-fighting sports that were maintained in different cities and provinces of Italy between the 12th and 17th centuries. There are also records of sport fist-fighting in ancient Russia. Boxing resurfaced in Europe during the early 16th century in the form of bare-knuckle boxing, also known as prizefighting. The first documented account of a bare-knuckle fight in England appeared in 1681 in the London Protestant Mercury when the 2nd Duke of Albemarle, Christopher Monck, arranged a bout between his butler and his butcher, with the latter winning the prize. The first English bare-knuckle champion was James Figg in 1719. This is also the time when the word "boxing" first came into use. It should be noted, that this early form of modern boxing was very different from today. There were no written rules, and matches contained fencing with swords or other weapons in addition to fist-fighting. There were no weight divisions or round limits, and no referee. Matches were extremely chaotic. The first boxing rules, called the Broughton's rules, were introduced by champion Jack Broughton in 1743 to protect fighters in the ring, where deaths were not uncommon. Under these rules, if a man went down and could not continue after a count of 30 seconds, the fight was over. Hitting a downed fighter and grasping below the waist were prohibited. Broughton also invented and encouraged the use of "mufflers," a form of padded gloves which were used in training and exhibitions. The first paper on boxing was published in the early 1700s by a Wrestler named Sir Thomas Parkyns, who was also a Physics student of Sir Isaac Newton. It was actually a single page in his extensive Wrestling & Fencing manual that entailed a system of head-butting, punching, eye gouging, chokes, and hard throws (not used in present day Boxing.) In 1867, the “Marquess of Queensberry” rules were drafted by John Chambers for amateur championships held in London. There were twelve rules in all, and they specified that fights should be "a fair stand-up boxing match" in a 24-foot-square ring or equivalent. Rounds were three minutes with one-minute rest period between rounds. Each fighter was given a ten-second count if they were knocked down and wrestling techniques like throws, holds or submissions were eliminated. The introduction of standardized gloves also changed the nature of bouts. These gloves typically resembled an enlarged pair of mittens laced up around the wrists. Consequently, bouts became longer and more strategic with greater importance attached to defensive maneuvers such as slipping, bobbing, countering and evasive movement. Because less defensive emphasis was placed on the use of the forearms and more on the gloves, the classical forearms outwards, torso leaning back stance of the bare knuckle boxer was modified to a more modern stance in which the torso is tilted forward and the hands are held closer to the face. Through the late nineteenth century, the martial art of boxing or prizefighting remained a questionable and inconsistent sport. Outlawed in England and much of the United States, prizefights were often held at gambling halls and broken up by police. Brawling and wrestling tactics continued, and riots at prizefights were common occurrences. Still, throughout this period, there arose some notable bare-knuckle champions who developed fairly sophisticated fighting tactics. The first world heavyweight champion under the Queensberry rules was "Gentleman Jim" Corbett, who defeated John L. Sullivan in 1892 at the Pelican Athletic Club in New Orleans. Throughout the early twentieth century, boxing struggled to achieve legitimacy, aided by the popularity of great champions from John L. Sullivan to Jack Dempsey. Eventually, boxing commissions and other sanctioning bodies were established to regulate the sport and establish universally recognized champions, which came to be known as professional boxing.

The origins of WRESTLING go back 15,000 years through cave drawings in France. Babylonian and Egyptian reliefs show wrestlers using most of the holds known in the present-day sport. In ancient Greece wrestling occupied a prominent place in legend and literature; wrestling competition, brutal in many aspects, served as the focal sport of the ancient Olympic Games. It is referenced in the classic book the Iliad, in which Homer recounts the Trojan War of the 13th or 12th century BC. The ancient Romans borrowed heavily from Greek wrestling, but eliminated much of its brutality. During the Middle Ages (fifth century to fifteenth century) wrestling remained popular and enjoyed the patronage of many royal families, including those of France, Japan and England. Early settlers brought wrestling traditions with them to America, and found it to be popular among Native Americans. Amateur wrestling flourished throughout the early years of the North American colonies and served as a popular activity at county fairs, holiday celebrations, and in military exercises. The first organized national wrestling tournament took place in New York City in 1888, and wrestling has been an event at every modern Olympic Games since the 1904 games in Saint Louis, Missouri (a demonstration had been performed at the first modern Olympics). The 1st NCAA Wrestling Championships were held in 1912, in Ames, Iowa. USA Wrestling, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, became the national governing body of amateur wrestling for all age-levels in 1983.